


In this Glass Capsule

by buttercups3



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, M/M, Male Slash, Threesome - F/M/M, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-29
Updated: 2013-06-16
Packaged: 2017-12-13 07:29:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 14,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/821638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttercups3/pseuds/buttercups3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Rachel surrenders to Miles but refuses to give up Ben's whereabouts, Bass joins Miles in resorting to extreme measures of extraction. Despite Rachel's initial status as victim, the three descend into a complex game of manipulation and exploitation, which binds them and then drives them apart. Action begins in the time period of the flashbacks of Season 1, Episode 17: The Longest Day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Little Hell Flames

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this story as well as chapter titles come from the Sylvia Plath poem, "Poppies in July." I highly recommend reading it in its entirety! Disclaimer: I have no association with Revolution, nor do I profit from from my adventures in its fandom in any way except the pleasure of having readers and reviewers!

Bass can tell that Miles is agitated and tense just by looking at the back of him. The shoulders are forward, the lean muscles on Miles’s dirty neck are taut. Miles is perched on a crate in front of a smoldering fire, smoke curling around his soiled uniform like eager, lapping snakes. As Bass approaches, he analyzes the stains on Miles’s uniform more carefully – mingled blood, sweat, and mud – marks of an exhausting, fruitless campaign: the endless search for Ben Matheson. Bass’s own uniform is still quite crisp and clean, despite his rapid three-day ride.

Bass is concerned about Miles. Miles’s letter to him had seemed somehow unlike his best friend – unnerved, scattered, tired. The letter reported that Rachel Matheson had surrendered herself but refused to give up Ben’s whereabouts. Rachel claimed to know everything that Ben knew about the Power but with a bonus: only she had the _motivation_ to turn the lights back on. What her reason was, she wouldn’t say, whether from magnanimity for humankind or her own duplicitous intentions.

Who is Bass kidding? Of course it is the latter. It always is with Rachel, and yet he can’t help himself. He wants her, has wanted her every millisecond of every day since he first laid eyes on her. Miles has too. Though Miles never confirmed, Bass knows that Miles has actually slept with her. The only instance in which Bass and Miles were ever apart for any length of time was when Miles was held captive in an Afghan prison for four months and then subsequently recovered in Ben and Rachel's Chicago apartment, while Bass remained on tour. When the friends reunited at Parris Island, Bass could tell that Miles wasn’t simply coping with the recent memories of the torture he’d endured as a prisoner of war. No, something momentous had occurred in Chicago. Late one night when Miles thought Bass was sleeping in his bunk, he heard the unmistakable sound of Miles grinding his dick between clenched fingers, stifling the desperate sounds of need, and finally breaking and gasping her name: _Rachel_. Bass had wanted to swing down and shove a pillow on Miles’s face. However briefly, Bass had been willing to suffocate the most loyal person to him on Earth. That was the force of Bass’s passion for Rachel. It drove him to the brink of insane, fervent, vengeful lust.

So Bass had set off for camp the very moment he’d read Miles’s letter about Rachel's appearance in their post-apocalyptic world – not because he doubts Miles can extract the necessary information from Rachel. If anyone can get her to talk (and Bass highly doubts this is possible, because Rachel never does anything she hasn't decided to do), it’d be Miles. No, Bass rode here at lightening speed because he does not want to leave them alone together. Here with them, Bass at least has a chance (and he hates himself a little for thinking this) to sleep with Rachel. Maybe he can even convince her to _want_ to be with him - to choose him over Miles.

Unlikely. Bass is not foolish enough to believe that Miles has gotten over Rachel or would relinquish his hold over her. After all these years, Miles still hasn’t gotten over Emma. Miles never, ever moves on from those he loves. In his relentless, stupid inertia, Miles reminds Bass of a permanently hibernating mud turtle.

Part of Bass despises Miles for being in his way of getting to Rachel, but now that Bass sees his best friend sitting there before him – the raven hair, the slumped posture – warmth returns. There’s no denying that they are brothers, bound together by a lifetime of intimacy so minute in detail, Bass wonders if it is possible to be closer to another human. They grew up skin to skin, pricking each other’s pinkies and mingling their blood to correct for Nature’s mistake in failing to make them actual relations. In battle, they had countless times fallen next to each other in a heap of electric nerves, afraid they’d piss their pants, afraid to breathe. Hell, Bass had even fucked the woman Miles lost his virginity to - the woman Miles had gotten down on one knee to propose marriage to – poorly probably, because Miles was good at many things but not at calling forth emotions into vocabulary. Bass knows the constellation of moles on Miles’s left shoulder, the way Miles’s legs bow slightly as he walks, like he’s a little drunk or lazy. He knows Miles as completely as any lover could. Bass could never hate him. Not really.

“Miles,” Bass says warmly, and Miles gets up and walks stiffly toward him in that familiar gait. Bass wants to say, _Where is she?_ but he can’t give away what he hopes Miles has not discerned over the course of more than a decade: that Bass is deeply, irrevocably in love with Rachel. The woman neither of them could have. Until now.

“Bass. Didn’t know you were coming.”

Miles’s unfathomable black eyes are slightly watery. Rachel must be taking her toll. That is how she is. She lies, she manipulates, she does it all for what she claims is right but is really just what she wants. Maybe it makes her no different from Monroe and Matheson, the bloodthirsty dictators of the Monroe Republic, but her world is so much smaller than theirs. They have to keep tens of thousands of humans safe and ordered; Rachel has only herself and her children to protect. (Whether she ever thinks of Ben is a mystery to Bass. Ben has always seemed so weak and meager in the eclipsing presence of his wife.)

“You ok, Miles? You seem…broken down,” Bass follows up.

“I hate lying,” Miles says bluntly.

“I know, man. But it comes with the territory. You have to lie for their own good.” The words come out before Bass has really thought them through, but once they’re said he realizes he does believe them. The subjects – _their_ subjects – don’t always know what’s best for them. You have to help them along. “What did you lie about?” Bass asks, a sinking feeling settling in the pit of his stomach.

Miles won’t say, Bass can tell. It must be about feelings, too deep, too raw for Miles to express. This is the great tragedy of Miles Matheson – he remains on the inside the fragile little nine year-old boy who watched his mother wither from cancer, but on the outside he is chained to stoicism.

Bass puts his arm on Miles’s shoulder and makes a decision. He’ll let Miles have Rachel first. It’s only fair. Bass can wait – can formulate a plan to get Miles to allow him access to her, maybe even invite it.

“If she won’t talk, Miles…you know what you have to do. Rachel’s a master manipulator. You have to get the upper hand. You can’t let her know how you feel…that you love her.” There. Bass has said out loud what Miles could never say, what Miles probably hoped to God Bass didn’t know. Why stop there? Miles already looks physically ill. Miles swallows and his Adam’s apple jumps.

“You had an affair with her, Miles. I know. How can you think I didn’t know? I know everything about you.” Bass waits to see if Miles is equally astute, but amazingly Miles isn’t…or at least refuses to play his cards.

Miles stares silently at Bass for a long moment. “I’m not sure I can torture her, Bass.”

“Miles. You always say that for torture to work you have to mean it. And you would know,” Bass adds a little cruelly, thinking of Miles's brutal stint as a POW. But Bass can’t entirely stem his own jealousy, and it encourages him to lash out. “So, brother…do something to her that you mean.”

* * *

 

Just this morning, Miles had ordered the small village where Rachel claimed the Mathesons had been living raised, scorched, utterly reduced to ash. He’d coldly informed her of these plans, but she hadn’t broken nor divulged Ben's location.

Now Miles enters his tent where he knows Rachel is strapped to a chair, released thrice daily only to relieve herself and even then under guard. The humiliation of being a prisoner. She also hasn’t been allowed to clean herself in days, and so without looking at her, he walks slowly to his washbasin and slides his hands into the cool water, relishing the feel. The midday light is filtering through the tent's canvas, and Miles imagines Rachel watching him, wanting him. He imagines stripping off her ragged shirt and pouring the silky water over her breasts, fingering her nipples through her bra. He’s already hard, pressing uncomfortably against his trousers, and he hasn’t even decided to do… _that_.

Miles is pretty sure Bass wants Rachel too, and Miles is less opposed to the idea than he would have thought. He’s not entirely sure he can bring himself to force fuck her, but Bass probably can. There’s a very sick part of Miles that wouldn’t mind watching. Now Miles mind clicks to exactly where he doesn’t want it to go: his and Rachel's conversation from yesterday.

_“Rachel I cared about you. Always thought you felt the same way.”_

_“We were kids. We had a cheap and ugly fling and not a day goes by that I don’t regret it."_

_“That is not the only thing you’re going to regret.”_

Miles had almost strangled and then hit her. He had wanted to. The fact that she could just fucking speak away their feelings for one another like that…He couldn’t believe that she didn’t love him anymore, but then how could she so ruthlessly dismiss him? He wants to hurt her now like she has hurt him. He’s ready. He turns around to face her after wiping his hands with a cloth.

“You son of a bitch,” she jabs at him. So she does care about him destroying her former home. She has such impressive control, he wouldn’t have even known.

Miles replies, taking extreme care to quiet his emotions, “You left me no choice. All you had to do was tell me where Ben is.”

“I can’t. I don’t know,” Rachel spits.

Miles almost smiles, he is so amazed by her dedication to her lies.

“Rachel,” he says, trailing his hands up her thighs, his hardness returning at the mere thought of where they meet. “You know how bad this is going to get for you? Do you think I care? About this?” he nods at his hands, which are locked onto the meat of her legs. “Whatever we had? That we are family?” He swallows. “Because I don’t.”

He draws his hands all the way to her pelvic bones before standing up. He is sure she can see the desire in his eyes, because he has very nearly lost control of himself. He knows that as long as he wants her, she retains some power over him, but all of a sudden he doesn’t care. He has seen undeniable evidence of another one of her lies. Her pupils dilated, her breath hitched. She wants him too.


	2. Colorless, Colorless

Miles is trying to sleep, but he keeps imagining Rachel tied to the chair in the wall tent, her blonde head bowed in restless slumber. The delicate chin pinned against the creamy white expanse just over the ample curve of her breasts. Miles groans and slides his hand into his boxers. He’s rough and merciless with himself when he masturbates – probably from a lifetime of needing to be quick about it. Rushing in the bed across from Ben in their shared childhood bedroom, in the bunks with his fellow Marines, in the tent just centimeters from Bass. Miles doesn’t know what it is to really enjoy a good wank. Maybe that’s one of the only religious wins his departed Catholic parents got from their younger son – his difficulty in taking real pleasure in oneristic sin. Miles runs his fingers up the familiar ridges of his dick and buries his face in the pillow to stifle any incriminating sounds. He may be all grown up – a mighty general who doesn’t have to share his tent with anyone – but it’s dead quiet out here in the wilderness, and he doesn’t want his men knowing that yes, he too is human, and fucks himself nightly because he’s lonely and stressed.

He squeezes his eyelids together and thinks of not the first time but the second time that he had sex with Rachel. It’s important to focus on the second time, because that was fully intentional; that was when he tasted her and touched her and made her desperately gasp his name, digging her fingers into his shoulders and asking him (tragically) after years of marriage, _So this is what it’s supposed to be like?_

The first time, in contrast, had erupted in a fit of unplanned misery, when Miles was so empty after returning from his imprisonment in Afghanistan that he scarcely felt human. Ben and Rachel had invited Miles to recover in their Chicago apartment; however, with the decision that Ben probably most regretted in life, Ben had chosen to spent those three months on fellowship at Stanford (he’d already committed before Miles was taken, before Miles came back from the dead), leaving his brother and his wife to finally cave to the years of simmering lust.

That first week back in Chicago, Miles lay immobilized in bed, growing a beard, staring at the wall, feeling just nauseous enough to be afraid to move his head but not sick enough to actually vomit relief. Nobody knew what he was re-living, could ever know, but Bass (still stuck on tour in Afghanistan) might have suspected. Bass had held Miles's hand exactly as his mother would have done when Miles lay in the hospital right after the Marines ( _his_ Marines) retrieved him from the Afghan prison: four months of lying in his own shit and piss. Bass knew that Miles had been placed on his stomach on the medical cot, because the surgeons had had to stitch his ass back together. At some point in those captive months, Miles’s torturers decided that sleep and food deprivation, that scraping off his flesh with pins, that the psychological triturating of telling him he was a pussy-cunt fifty times an hour weren’t enough, that just to prove to Miles how much of a worthless, cock-sucking American bottom scum he was, they’d start shoving things in his butt. Whatever they had lying around – nothing was too small or too large. It all went in. Miles broke long before they resorted to that and had already told them the piddling amount of intelligence possessed by a U.S. Marine sergeant – virtually nothing. No, this final phase of torture was just for fun, because Americans were the worst kind of fuckholes who deserved humiliation, degradation, and utter destruction from the inside out.

When Miles was first carried out of his cell on a stretcher by Bass and his lieutenant, he was brought to triage in a tent that was the same color as the desert sand. And this he could never forget, no matter how much he wanted to: a pretty, little brunette nurse asked Miles, _Were you raped?_ The question was almost worse than what he’d just lived through. His mouth hung open, as she peered familiarly at his ruined asshole, and she told him, _We’ll get you some counseling._ When he found his voice, he barked at her that he _hadn’t_ been raped…How dare she imply it was sex. It was merely torture. He took comfort in this distinction.

Miles has given up on jerking himself off, because this topic is not conducive to arousal. Despite his best efforts, his mind does not drift back to the second time he and Rachel made love but the dreaded first – the mistake that set their affair in motion. Miles had finally gotten out of bed much to Rachel’s relief, but he took to wandering the frigid streets of Chicago, hoping to die. He’d heard freezing to death was peaceful. Only later did he learn it was minus ten degrees with wind chill. Only later did he learn that Rachel had gone into a blind panic – called Ben, nearly called the police, when she couldn’t find Miles for hours – their very own, real life damaged POW. What the hell where they to do with him? Rachel finally found Miles standing above the river, and Miles could see reflected in her face how cold it was, since he had long since gone numb. Her lips were colorless as a corpse. She convinced him to get into her beat-up car, took him home and stripped him, placing him in a warm bath like a child, hoping to reignite his circulation. He saw her stare at his withered, battered body in the water. She regarded him with a look that was burned on his brain. She called him, _B_ _eautiful_.

When she’d realized her error, she left in a rush, but when Miles emerged from the bathroom and stood in the hallway with only a thin towel wrapped around his waist, she crossed abruptly to meet him. He grew instantly hard and drew her against him, suddenly, unthinkingly devouring her lips (now red as poppies), trying to touch every inch of her body at once. She moaned into his mouth and begged him to touch. His towel dropped to the floor, and he practically tore the clothes from her. When he put his fingers against her sex they slipped right in she was so wet, and without pausing to consider a condom or the ramifications of sleeping with his own brother’s wife, Miles slid his penis into her. He fucked her against the wall a few times, before they sank onto the floor in a twitching heap, him grinding into her, and her calling out in an instant orgasm as the friction overwhelmed her. He came only seconds after, so violently, so desperately, that he gasped. The whole encounter couldn’t have lasted more than two minutes.

The resulting affair had gone on for months – until Miles had to report back to Parris Island. But it hadn’t cured him of his feelings for Rachel.

Despite what Miles has been insisting since Rachel appeared here at militia camp, what Bass said earlier today is absolutely true. Miles is completely, irreversibly in love with Rachel Matheson. But this doesn’t change the fact that he needs to ( _wants_ to) use her. Things got very ugly between them. Rachel has proven herself capable of exquisite cruelty - a true Matheson, maybe even beyond them.

Miles is weary of lying here alone with his thoughts. He puts on his uniform and heads for Rachel’s tent. Should he really be surprised that there is a candle burning on the inside of the canvas – that he can just make out the silhouettes of Rachel in her chair and Bass standing before her?

Surprised, no. But Miles still feels betrayed.


	3. Do No Harm?

Bass’s plan to wait for Miles to invite him into Rachel’s tent is all too reasonable for a man who has been a caged animal in lust for nearly two decades. In his impatience, Bass has allowed Miles time to retire to his new tent (Rachel is staying in his usual) before stealing quietly into the darkness and entering the forbidden room of Sheba. Bass lights a candle before parting the canvas flaps, his pupils contracting (his balls too at the mere thought of the possibilities in these private hours past midnight). After all, the Monroe Republic is his dominion, and Rachel is _his_ …at least as much as Miles’s.

Rachel swings her blonde head upward from its loll (possibly she had fallen into a fitful sleep) and regards Bass with cool contempt.

“Bass,” she says without emotion or familiarity, though Bass was once practically family, and she hasn’t laid eyes on him since the Blackout.

“Rachel. Good to see you again. Wish the circumstances were better,” Bass offers in a stilted tone. This is the first time he’s had to torture someone he’s in love with. He swiftly pushes down the confliction of emotions.

“Well, you caused the circumstances. You and Miles. If you regret them, let me go. Let my family just…disappear. We’ll leave the Republic forever.”

Bass chuckles, more to offer a response than from genuine amusement. He scrapes his hand over his stubble. The yellow glow of the candlelight reflects off the pair’s golden hair, making them appear almost as siblings, joined by DNA instead of mutual catastrophe.

“That’s not going to happen. I’m sure Miles has made that clear. Miles is good at being direct,” Bass smiles. “Miles is also good at extracting information from hostile captives…but perhaps not in this case. Perhaps you two are too close given your past together.”

“He told you about that,” Rachel says with absolute restraint. There’s no hint of whether or not this insight surprises her.

“No. But I know Miles better than anyone, Rachel. Better than you know him, even though you’ve fucked him. Hell, after a lifetime of looking at Ben through Miles’s eyes, I might even know your own husband better than you…that is, if you’re still married.”

“We are, asshole,” Rachel snaps.

“Well, it’s worth asking. So…Ben rolled over and took the affair like a pussy then, did he?”

Rachel makes a snarling sound and tries to spit at Bass, but she apparently has been too water-deprived to form the necessary moisture.

“You’re thirsty, Rachel. Let me get you a drink of water.”

Rachel doesn’t object, so Bass ladles some water from Miles’s washbasin into a tin cup. The water is dirty, but Bass doesn’t mind – is, in fact, taking pleasure in withholding something from this woman who has withheld from him for so long; however, he wants her mouth wet for what comes next.

He strides back to her and holds the cup just shy of her lips.

“First, tell me something. Then, I help you. How involved in the power going out were you personally?” he asks.

Rachel is eying the water with rapacious desire. Several large strands of her ponytail have fallen into her face, and she tries to toss them aside. “Very. At least in the design stage – not in the execution.”

Bass nods. “So can you get the lights back on?”

“No. I just told you – I wasn’t involved in the actual mechanism of terminating the power.”

“I don’t believe you, Rachel,” Bass smiles. “If you were involved in the thing’s blueprint, then you must now how to reverse it…but you can have your water.” Bass pauses. “Then I’ll punish you for lying.”

Rachel’s chin sets slightly at the threat, but she gulps greedily at the water raised to her lips. Some of it slides down her chin and drenches the front of her blouse. Bass allows her to drink over and over again from the ladle, and finally asks, “Would you like more?”

She shakes her head. He has given her her complete fill. Then, he unzips his fly and takes out his penis. He sees Rachel’s eyes widen and is pleased that he’s caught her off guard. Perhaps she didn’t think he had it in him. Bass doubts that she hasn’t had some inkling of his attraction to her – a woman of her sagacity – impossible. He pumps his dick briefly to bring it to life and then positions it in front of her impossibly pink lips, which are spreading into a menacing grin.

“Go ahead. I’ll bite it,” she warns.

“No you won’t,” states a flat voice from behind Bass. It is Miles. He appears next to Bass, looking coldly at Rachel. “Or I’ll cut your throat,” Miles finishes with impressive impassivity. He lights a lamp along the way as he walks slowly behind Rachel and raises the point of his knife to the tight skin of her Adam’s apple.

Rachel inhales sharply.

“Open,” Bass commands.

When Rachel hesitates, Miles pushes the blade in slightly, drawing a pinprick of scarlet. Bass then forces his cock against her lips, and she admits him. Bass grunts at the wetness, the softness of her tongue, the way her sculpted cheeks look stretched by him.

“Use your teeth, and I’ll use mine,” Miles cautions, lowering the knife slightly toward her collarbone to allow her space to work Bass’s dick.

Bass is surprised Miles is here helping him. Bass briefly wonders if this is not actually happening, and he’s having an erotic dream alone in his tent. To have this consummation after all these years of wanting Rachel is almost too much. It feels oddly right to have Miles just a few inches away as Rachel is sucking him off. Maybe they were never meant to fight over Rachel but simply to share.

Rachel’s brain is racing from a malicious thought – _Are they really so codependent that they need each other to get off?_ – to excruciating pain, because she has no control over Bass’s movements, to something she can’t quite bring herself to admit to but has to do with being sandwiched between Bass and Miles. The pain now takes center stage; every time Bass jams his dick forward, it hits the back of her throat, choking her, bringing tears to her eyes, inciting soreness on par with when she had streptococcal pharyngitis back in grad school.

Though Miles still has his knife against her lower neck, he pulls out her hair tie and gathers her hair into his own rough, makeshift ponytail with the other. It’s a very intimate gesture that only she would understand. Whenever Rachel used to blow Miles, he’d always hold her hair this way. They would lock eyes, and she’d seen oceans of melancholy fall away. Miles had definitely loved her. She knows this as simply as she knows her own children love her. She wishes she could see his eyes now, but he’s behind her.

After a few minutes of Bass’s rhythmic pounding, she feels the tension in Miles’s knife relax, and his hand falls from her hair. Whether it’s from sympathy for her pain (perhaps from his birds-eye view he has noticed the tears leaking out the corners of her eyes) or from arousal, at first she can’t tell. But after a few more minutes she senses and hears unmistakable confirmation in the hitches of Miles’s breath that he is masturbating to her torture.

She has a sudden pang of hatred for Miles. He, of all people, standing by while she is assaulted. Miles was so possessive of her when they were together – it didn’t matter that she was married to his brother. He never wanted to let go after they had sex, didn’t want to pull his dick back out, hoped to stay locked together as long as possible. Now, he’s letting his best friend mouth fuck her in his presence. How far Miles has fallen.

Bass is getting close; Rachel can tell. He’s pushing in harder and harder. She does her best to relax her throat to lessen the agony. She even tries to pretend Bass is Ben, though she never really cared for blowing Ben. Bass is coming, and she can senses that Miles is too, though his knife is now pushed forward into her neck. The warm ejaculate squirts into her throat, and she starts choking so forefully that Bass allows himself to be evicted from her mouth.

Rachel coughs and spits and whimpers, “You son of a bitch,” over and over again. She feels something akin to a paper cut on her neck. Whether from distraction or intentional cruelty, Miles has cut her just a little.

Bass slides his hand up and down his penis a few times before tucking it away.

“You’re both sick!” Rachel hurls at them. She doesn’t even know why she’s bothering to try to shame them. She’s mostly angry that her throat hurts.

Serenely, Bass walks out of the tent without another word or glance. Miles remains standing behind her, still as death. After a long moment, he begins untying her hands.

“You can clean up,” he explains simply.

Rachel’s mind instantly jumps to a number of potential plans until it hits on this: the second her hands are free, she reaches for the large wooden box sitting on the side table and wheels around with pure adrenaline, slamming its corner straight into the side of Miles’s head. He hasn’t seen it coming (though he should have – perhaps he _does_ still care for her, maybe even trusts her, she thinks), and he crumbles to the dirt, blood trickling from his temple.

She feels a moment of regret – afraid she’s killed him – but then she notices his chest rise and fall. She drags him across the ground to a pole that holds up the center of the tent and lays him on his back, his head just resting against the metal. She quickly uses the rope that had once been her restraints to fasten his wrists behind him to the pole. She’s about to run, when she falls flat on her face. He tripped her, she realizes too late. She should have tied his feet.

“Going somewhere, Rachel?” Miles asks. He looks groggy from the head injury. It could be serious.

“Away from here, you fucker!” she barks, scooting backward on her rear.

“There are fifteen men guarding this tent on the other side of that canvas,” Miles explains in an even voice, though he squeezes his eyelids together briefly in apparent pain. “Placed them there myself. They have orders to shoot you dead if you try to escape.”

Rachel tries to peer through the canvas in the low light and indeed glimpses shadows beyond the fabric. She looks back at Miles. “Then, I’ll just kill you. They won’t be able to help you until it’s too late. My life for yours. It’s not the worst deal I can think of. It will help the rest of this woebegone Republic out.”

Miles chuckles, though she can tell his head is throbbing. “I don’t believe you’d give up the ghost that easily. Besides, you clearly need more experience tying knots. I can get out of this before you can get near me.”

“Then why haven’t you already freed yourself?” Rachel hopes she is calling his bluff.

“Because I’m interested to see what you’ll do with me now that you have me tied up.”

Rachel surveys Miles with sudden interest, because she hasn’t thought until this moment how the tables have turned and that perhaps – _insanely_ – Miles is actually pleased with his new fortunes. She makes a decision that under other circumstances might appear deranged but, given what she’s just been subject to, seems suddenly appropriate. She gets up and removes her pants, then panties, and stands astride Miles’s face. He gazes up at her with borderline admiration.

Rachel proclaims, “You like watching people be force fed, you sick fuck? Why don’t you see what it’s like.”

She sits down on Miles’s face, and she can tell that she’s suffocating him at first, but he’s able to reposition himself in a moment. He gamely allows her to rub savagely against his lips, and he even tries to push his tongue into her. She’s not about to let him enjoy himself too much, so she fucks his face as forcefully as possibly, relishing the sounds of him gasping and sputtering. She’s at the brink so quickly, she’s surprised. She clenches down into his tongue and releases in a fury.

Panting, she’s suddenly too sensitive to continue to sit on Miles’s face, so she slides down to his stomach, placing her hands on his chest to collect herself. When she finally opens her eyes, she sees Miles lips are ruby red – the bottom one even cut on his own teeth – his dark eyes watching her lustfully. She can’t decide whether the look makes her angry or more aroused.

Miles finally speaks in a raspy voice, “You don’t need to tie me up if you want that.”

“Fuck you, Miles.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Miles replies, and impressively, Rachel can feel that just beneath his stomach, he’s already hardening again despite having come not fifteen minutes ago and sustaining a head injury. Rachel looks at his crotch briefly, unzips his fly, and yanks down his pants and underwear to his knees, exposing his familiar dick as it slowly rouses.

“You want to be tied up and fucked, Miles? I’m surprised at you. I thought you liked ultimate control. Isn’t that why you’re general? Isn’t that why you storm around with your little minions slaying people just for looking at you funny? But you want to surrender completely to me – your own prisoner. I don’t know what that says about you. You are astonishingly broken, Miles,” Rachel says. She blows on his cock, and he exhales loudly. “ _Beg_ ,” she demands.

Miles laughs.

“Beg, you cocksucker. Beg me to fuck you, and I’ll show you what it feels like to be fucked with all the hate and rage in the world. You deserve it. You deserve to be ravaged and destroyed and made to sniffle like the scared little boy you are inside, who just misses his mommy.”

With those vicious words, she yanks his dick into her hand and pulls it to fully erect. Then she hovers above it, just gliding the wetness of her sex over its sensitive head. It jumps.

Miles’s face is glowering, but his mouth does beg, “Please. Fuck me. Rachel.”

She settles down on him, and she tries not to admit how familiar, how satisfying it feels to have him fill her. She leans forward just inches from his face and reaches back to cock block him: securing her fingers at the base of his dick in a kungfu grip.

“My fun – not yours,” she informs him, as he groans.

She imagines his cock as a dildo and fucks herself on it as roughly as possible without destroying herself. Miles has squeezed his eyes shut and is gritting his teeth. She likes the pain she sees on his face and squeezes the base with all the strength she can muster. She comes again – a slightly less intense orgasm but a relief nonetheless. She moves off Miles still gripping his dick and kneels beside him.

“You want relief? Beg.”

Miles doesn’t hesitate this time. He skin is sunburn red from his neck to the top of his head. “Please,” he gasps.

“Please what?”she taunts.

Miles looks at her a bit wildly, like he’s not sure what else to say.

“What would you like me to do, Miles?”

“Let me come,” he pleads.

She reaches over and quickly jacks him. Almost instantly, he is coming in spurts. She allows herself to admit that she missed his beautiful dick, especially the way it looks when it’s coming. She thinks to herself that this is exactly how she wants to remember him, as she extracts Miles’s knife from her pocket and raises it to stab him in the chest. Her wrist is excruciatingly wrenched, and she fears it will snap. The knife clatters to the ground. Miles is out of his restraints, sitting up, and has wrestled her into his lap. Rachel's face is now centimeters from the wilting cock she was just admiring.

“You thought I’d just let you kill me, Rachel? I told you, I’m not that stupid.”

Rachel’s panting and rubs her injured wrist. It’s not broken. She thinks to herself, _Miles never wants sex to end after orgasm; he loves being inside me_. She suddenly realizes her best chance to level the playing field. She places her mouth on his dripping dick.

Miles snatches the fallen knife and holds it instantly against her throat.

“I _will_ kill you if you bite me. I won't think twice. And unlike you, who apparently believes you have the strength to plunge a knife through a grown man’s ribcage, I know exactly how to snuff the life out of you.”

Rachel dutifully licks his penis like a cat, and she can hear Miles moan and toss his head back in rapture. Then she sits up in his arms, and he encircles her, as if they are real lovers, finishing up with a cuddle.

Miles squints his eyes at her, his dark eyebrows arched. “Some part of you must have wanted to come here, Rachel, must have wanted to be with me again," he says.

Rachel smiles, allowing herself to fully settle into his chest. She's got her fish on the line.


	4. I Put My Hands Among the Flames

Miles and Bass make a decision after debriefing with their spies on Ben’s possible whereabouts. They have infuriatingly few leads, so it is best to take Rachel back to the capital, where they will continue to work on extracting information from her. They agreed without discussion to hold her prisoner in Miles’s room – Bass felt he at least owed Miles that after Miles let him fuck Rachel first. In truth, Bass doesn’t know what happened with Miles and Rachel after he left the tent that first night, though Miles did emerge with a nasty head gash (which makes Bass wonder who bested whom). Bass still isn’t sure why Miles isn’t angrier with him for taking the initiative with Rachel, but he’ll accept it as a gift.

During the three-day ride back to Philly, Miles leads, while Bass takes up the rear, so they scarcely talk at all. Neither touches Rachel for the duration of the journey, each mentally regrouping in his own way after the strange events that have occurred.

Miles is glad to have some space from Bass after their recent intimacy. He’s having difficulty sorting out his muddled feelings about Bass forcing himself on Rachel (and Miles's own complete complicity in it), but this is nothing compared to his confusion regarding Rachel herself. And then there is the fact of _himself_ and what he’s become. How exactly did he slide down a rabbit hole this twisted to emerge as a man who tortures his own sister-in-law, the woman he’s been in love with for most of his adult life? There are, then, no limits for him and Bass, only restrictions they’ve concocted for other people. And now it seems, given Miles’s own insane night of fucking Rachel (her fucking him, really), they’ve invited her into their ethical void – their grim, almost psychopathic Through the Looking Glass existence. Perhaps she even wants to come along for the ride.

When they arrive back at Independence Hall, Miles orders Rachel taken to his room and places an absurdly large guard outside her door, as well as militiamen poised below the windows. Part of him is afraid that, given her astonishing iron will, there is nothing he can do to hold her here unless she wants to be held. He orders the guards to untie her, to allow her a bath in private (he’s starting to feel possessive of her again), and to bring her dinner when she’s finished. For now, he needs to locate Bass and talk strategy if they are going to get anything out of Rachel. She’s so much smarter than they are, she’s in a different solar system.

Bass is drinking whiskey in his office and immediately pours Miles a drink as he enters, glancing up through his blonde eyelashes.

“Rachel settled?” Bass asks conversationally.

“You could say that,” Miles shakes his head.

“What?” Bass follows up with an air of: _What aren’t you saying?_

“Man, what are we doing?” Miles hurls back, suddenly angry at his friend, though maybe more rightly, angry at himself.

Bass scoffs. “What are _you_ doing, Miles? Because what I’m doing is trying to find out where your brother is, so we can flip the lights back on. What you seem to be doing is letting your feelings for Rachel get in the way.”

Miles sips his drink and levels his cold, brown eyes at Bass. “Ok. But that’s not _all_ you’re doing, Bass. I was there, too.”

Bass swallows. It’s uncomfortable recalling that they, in a sense, had sex together. Bass, for one, didn’t mind having Miles there – maybe he even liked it better that way.

Bass asks in a quieter voice, “How’d you get the head wound?” He suddenly realizes that he’s ludicrously jealous – not of the thought of Miles and Rachel fucking but of them fucking without him.

Miles answers, “She tied me up. She…” but Miles doesn’t need to finish. Bass can see his best friend’s pupils dilate at the memory. He gets it.

Bass’s brain isn’t working anymore. But his gut urges him to say, “Well then we’re in trouble.”

Miles questions Bass darkly with his eyes.

Bass is speaking now from instinct rather than carefully crafted analysis: “She’s playing you, man.” He shrugs, but he doesn’t feel very calm about the situation.

Miles has to admit to himself that this is probably true…and extremely discomfiting. He suggests, “We need to team up against her then. What’s she got against four decades of loyalty to each other, Bass? Nothing. She’s the vulnerable one.”

Bass takes a big swig of the amber liquor. “And how do we do that?”

“Not sure yet. But I think you’ve got the right idea there,” Miles nods at Bass’s tumbler, taking an enormous gulp of his own drink.

They have several more whiskeys before they go upstairs to Miles’s room together.

* * *

 

Rachel is sitting on Miles’s bed, clean at last, save her nails. She could not scrub out the dirt from those half moons of once-white. She has not been given any clothes to wear and is stark naked, her creamy skin luminous against the green-striped blanket. All the curtains are drawn, and she sits in dim lamplight.

The door opens and Miles and Bass appear, their faces still and unrevealing – closed ranks. She wonders what they have planned for her tonight. She knows only one thing: she will not breathe a word about her family’s location no matter what happens. In the time between now and when they kill her, she will see if she can get them to turn on one another. It will be her parting gift to the world, because even if her ancient feelings for Miles never go away (and bewilderingly, that resilient passion for Miles seems to bleed over to his best friend), Miles and Bass must die. Sure, she may have caused the apocalypse in the first place, but they have made the paltry resulting existence unlivable for humanity.

“I see you’re ready for us,” Bass comments, feasting his eyes upon her naked body. His dick jumps, and he feels Miles’s body electrify beside him.

Rachel resists the urge to be self-conscious. She must remain in control. It’s the only way.

Bass and Miles exchange a glance and begin undressing until they, too, are completely nude. 

“Now we have all been stripped of our pretenses, Rachel. No games tonight. No throwing things at people’s heads. We won’t ask you about Ben; we’re just here to fuck,” Bass announces in a parody of a morale-elevating speech.

_What are they playing at?_ Rachel wonders. Whatever it is, she can’t let them win. Miles lays down beside her and cocks his head, giving her a not-unfriendly smirk.

“You’re in my bed,” he explains in his gruff voice.

Rachel notices that Miles is hardening already. She decides to try taking the reigns. She spits on her hand and works him until she can feed his dick inside her. She then sits reverse cowgirl on him, so she can gaze at Bass, still standing and observing them, as she slowly rocks back and forth, allowing Miles’s hardness to thud against the back and front of her vagina. Bass strokes himself casually. Sweat trickles down his chiseled torso, like a marble statue of old. _He is not hard to look at_ , she thinks. She finally beckons to Bass, and he comes over and kneels between Miles’s legs just inches away from her.

Bass wants in, Rachel can tell, but after a few minutes of desperate struggle, in which his cock keeps jamming up against Miles’s, he grunts in frustration. The angle is not right for getting both men in her at once.

“I have a better idea,” Rachel suggests.

She slides off of Miles walks across the room to the discarded dinner plate upon which sits a small jar of lard she chose not to smear on the biscuits. She smiles at Bass, who is now reclining on an elbow at the foot of he bed, while Miles has sat up slightly to watch her.

“Use it on him,” Rachel says to Bass, nodding at Miles.

Though she’s given very little advance thought to this, she’s impressed with her own ingenuity. Rachel extracts a pillow from the head of the bed and shoves it under Miles’s hips, who lifts up his pelvis for her. He’s, in fact, suspiciously compliant. She hasn’t noticed Miles and Bass exchange a glance of tacit agreement. Rachel dips her middle and index finger into the lard and crawls over to Bass, smearing it along the length of his dick like she’s buttering a corncob. Bass closes his eyes and enjoys it. She leans in and sucks on his right nipple before biting it gently. He opens his eyes in warning, but she is already moving back toward Miles. She straddles him just above the pubic bone; his cock has wilted slightly. She entangles her fingers in his chest hair and begins kissing him tenderly at first and then more aggressively. She parts his lips with her tongue, and Miles slides his hands over her bum, grasping her needily.

Miles is getting lost in the feeling of Rachel’s tongue in his mouth, though he’s trying to focus on being in control – it’s crucial that nothing happens here to which he hasn’t assented. He intellectually understands that Bass is going to use the lard on him, but when he feels Bass’s palm against his sphincter, he immediately contracts from the contact. Bass is patient, gently rubbing the makeshift lube across Miles’s raw hole. When Bass presses a finger against the opening, though, that special burn overcomes Miles, and he fights against it plunging him back into memories he can’t control of his interment in the Afghan prison.

Miles tries to convince himself, _I can do this; it makes sense that it’s me, not Bass taking it in the ass_.

Miles doesn’t realize it, but he’s stopped kissing Rachel back having grown so focused on what Bass is doing. Rachel is watching Miles squeeze his eyes shut, as he fights his private battle with his body. He opens one to look at her.

“Relax, Miles. He won’t hurt you,” Rachel assures. “He’s not here to torture you.”

_She knows_ , he thinks – though he’s never told her about the specifics of what he endured as POW. It’s unnerving, but Miles trusts Bass not her. This is about winning – the two of them getting the upper hand on Rachel. Bass nudges Miles’s hole with the blunt of his dick, and the sphincter clenches down uncontrollably. The acid burn is more intense than ever, and Bass probes him again and again, trying to gain entrance. For a moment, Miles doesn’t think he’s going to be able to go through with this, simply because his body is incapable, but then, Bass just ghosts his hand on Miles’s hip, letting it rest there ever so gently, reassuring him. The incredible tenderness of the gesture helps Miles force himself to relax. After all, he’s loosened before under terrible circumstances. He can ease up for someone he loves and trusts.

Finally, Bass slides his penis in just a centimeter, and Miles makes such a lovely, pathetic little groan that Rachel turns around and straddles Miles the other direction so that she can watch Bass. She takes Miles’s now fully erect penis, resting just below her thighs, in one hand and with the other works her clitoris, practically salivating as Bass continues to ease himself into Miles, Bass’s hand still resting on his friend’s hip. She grinds her vulva back and forth across Miles’s stomach, drenching him.

Bass locks eyes with Rachel – blue to blue – and very quickly she is coming, her head suddenly tossed back, crying out. Though she still has a hand on Miles’s temporarily-neglected dick, she has let herself go with the other, and Bass grabs it, interlocking fingers with her. She lets him, opening her eyes again to watch him. The three stay that way, connected skin to skin: Bass to Miles’s hip and opening and to Rachel’s fingers, Rachel to Bass’s fingers and to Miles’s penis. Miles lifts his head to gaze down at them, feeling, bizarrely, tremendously cared for.

Bass closes his eyes and buries himself completely in Miles, carrying Miles away with the stimulation of so many nerve endings and the foreign pleasure of dick against prostate. Miles wills himself to relax again, because Bass’s cock is so filling. The fire at Miles’s opening at last subsides. Miles exhales in satisfaction.

“Mm,” Bass whispers, and Miles doesn’t know if it’s meant for him or for Rachel, but the two men have been so close for so long that Miles doesn’t even care that this ménage a trois has progressed so far beyond what he imagined when they discussed teaming up against Rachel.

Miles whispers, “Fuck,” in complete acquiescence to the pleasure of Bass inside him, and this seems to impel both of his bed partners. Rachel suddenly releases Bass’s fingers and begins working Miles’s penis with both hands, using rough, broad strokes. Miles is totally losing control over his body and mouth – doesn’t know what sounds he’s making – but his companions seem to like it. Bass is thrusting with increasing force against Miles’s prostate, and without warning Miles comes harder than he’s ever come in his life, spasming up and into Rachel’s fingers, grabbing forceful hold of her torso from behind. Rachel rings him out a few more times and then apparently uses his cum to lubricate herself and start working toward a second orgasm. She’s so wet on Miles’s stomach, he’s almost worried she’ll slip off, so he continues to hold her in position.

In a moment, Miles is too sensitized to take Bass's violent thrusting.

“Bass,” Miles warns, his voice so weak with sated sex that it sends Bass instantly over the top. Miles experiences the peculiar sensation of a man coming deep inside him, while Rachel explodes into her second peak, one hand buried in her folds and the other latched onto her breast. Miles spends a moment envying women their multiple orgasms, because he would have loved to come again – the three of them at once, one being.

Bass eases out of Miles as gently as possible, which makes Miles whimper, and finally, Bass takes his hand off Miles’s skin. Rachel repositions herself on top of Miles to relax, her face nestled in the crook of his arm. Bass wipes himself off on the sheets and lies down beside them.

Miles’s eyes are closed, but he can tell Bass is looking at him, concerned about what this means for their friendship. Bass often needs reassurance when something new comes along to test them, and this is _definitely_ new. They’ve never fucked before, and though this technically was a threesome, there is no denying that they’ve been as intimate with each other as two humans can possibly be. In a way, what they just did didn’t require Rachel at all.

“Ok?” Bass asks aloud, and Miles doesn’t open his eyes but is sure it’s directed at him; he just nods almost imperceptibly, stroking Rachel’s golden mane, getting lost and entangled in the strands. He can tell by her breathing that she’s either asleep or near it.

Miles’s subtle response is not enough to placate Bass.

“Miles?” Bass asks in the same small, worried voice.

Miles opens his eyes to look briefly at the earnest blues.

“Ok, Bass,” he responds. He’s not sure if that’s true, but for now he’s exhausted and wants to be left alone.

Miles glances down again at the beautiful, destructive woman lying in his arms and then back at Bass. Miles asks Bass with his eyes if it’s ok to sleep. They both know what Rachel is capable of if not watched. Bass nods. He will keep watch over them.


	5. Where are Your Opiates, Your Nauseous Capsules?

“Rachel. Get off.”

Rachel rouses groggily from slumber. It’s Bass voice. She’s lying entangled in his arms and legs, and Miles is gone. At some point, during the early morning, he must have slipped away. Bass sounds irritated. Rachel tries to figure out why.

“Shit,” Bass mutters to himself.

Rachel posits that it is because Miles has left him alone, which means two things: first, that Bass is stranded with Rachel and therefore responsible for her (and maybe, just maybe, Bass is a little afraid of her); second, it means that Miles has unceremoniously abandoned Bass after they had sex. Rachel is still rather amazed by that development and keeps asking herself, _Who won that round?_ On one hand, there’s nothing like screwing your best friend to fuck up a relationship. That’s good news for her. On the other, what happened last night almost felt like witnessing, participating in, two people making love. Could there be romantic affection between them? Or are they fooling her? Confusing her?

Bass has shoved her off, and she decides to put on a smile in an attempt to unnerve him.

“Missing your boyfriend, Bass?” she asks in a sugary voice.

“Fuck you, Rachel.”

“Oh, I’m sure you will again soon. But maybe not without Miles - that is, since you’ve realized it’s _him_ you really crave.”

Bass starts getting dressed in a mad rush.

“Not that I blame you. His ass is nice. Alas, I always preferred it to Ben’s.” It burns a little to say, because, unfortunately, it is true. Sex was never Ben's strong suit.

Bass begins to cut a hasty path to the door. “You think you have something on me, but you forget: You’re in my town. My country. I’ll make you hurt in ways you never thought possible.”

“We’ll see. I’ve imagined a lot of potential punishments for myself considering my vast list of transgressions.” Rachel sighs. “Bass, can I get some books or something? It’s really rather boring being your prisoner. No offense.”

“Well. You’ll have your books,” Bass says as calmly as possible to counteract the unraveling occurring inside. “But I can’t guarantee you’ll still be able to read them when I’m done with you.”

Bass sets off to look for Miles, but halfway down the hall, he stops and holds the frame of a window, looking out onto the clean Philadelphia morning. He’s in love with Rachel, right? Of course he is. He’s always been. Then why does he feel so suddenly hostile toward her and so desperate to get back to Miles? Is he in love with the things Miles’s loves, or is he in love with… He can’t let himself think it. And yet he’s so concerned that his relationship with Miles will be broken after last night, he’s actually sick to his stomach.

Jeremy suddenly strides up to him. “Bass,” he says in gravelly greeting, like he’s been hard at work drinking though it can't be past 9am. His eyes are sleepy and red. “You look ill. You ok?”

“You seen Miles, Jeremy?” Bass asks.

“Yep, I saw him about twenty minutes ago getting his horse shod.”

“His horse…why? He going somewhere?”

“Don’t know, sir. Miles is the general. He doesn’t always tell the little people what he’s up to. What’s wrong? You two fight again?” Jeremy barely tries to disguise his smirk.

Bass scrutinizes Jeremy for a moment, and wonders if Jeremy suspects that he’s in love with Miles. He wonders, absurdly, if Jeremy can tell that Bass has fucked Miles last night and liked it a great deal. In fact, his dick is starting to rise in his pants at the raw memory.

Bass says to Jeremy, “Change the guard on Rachel Matheson’s door every few hours. I don’t want soldiers slacking on the job. She’s dangerous.”

“Um…Miles already gave me orders on her – including moving her. You want me to belie them?”

Bass’s bottom lip almost quivers. “No. Whatever he said will be fine.”

“Ok.”

“Oh and Jeremy,” Bass adds as Jeremy is moving on, “see to it that Rachel is brought some books. Whatever she wants.”

“Yes, sir.”

Bass notices Jeremy give him a strange backward glance as they go their separate ways. Bass heads for the stables, but on his way down the front steps, Miles is tromping up in boots caked with mud.

“Miles!” Bass calls to him over-eagerly. He tries to shake off the pathetic tone, since he sees that Miles’s eyes are stormy. Bass can’t possibly have feelings for Miles. Just days ago he practically hated Miles, wanting to steal Rachel out from under him.

“What?” Miles has asked, but Bass hasn’t heard. Miles gives a little impatient flick of his head to show that he’s still waiting for an answer.

Bass realizes that though he’s been looking for Miles, he’s not sure what he wants to say to him. Then he remembers Jeremy’s words.

“You ordered Rachel moved? Where?” Bass asks, trying to muster self-assurance.

“Your room.”

Bass rubs his chin. He’s taken aback. “You going somewhere?”

“Going?”

“Jeremy said you were getting Zeppelin shod.”

“Oh. No. Not till tomorrow. New lead on Ben.”

“What?”

“Just an old friend of his. Maybe Ben and the kids contacted him – stayed with him. Who knows. I’ll only be gone for a couple days.”

“What should I do with her?”

Miles regards Bass sharply, making Bass feel stupid and inept at his job.

Miles says quietly, “Same as before. Get her to talk.”

Bass thinks, _Except, we haven't gotten her to say a word._

Miles moves elegantly up the stairs and out of sight, leaving Bass wondering what on earth he could do to get Rachel Matheson to break. He does know this: He wants to make Miles proud – to have something to give him when he returns.

* * *

 

Miles has been gone two and a half days and two nights, and he is bone-weary from the ride. He asks an orderly to draw him a bath, and as he sinks into the almost unbearably scalding water, he gazes pensively at his bed. Too recently it was full with Rachel and Bass. Bass…Miles closes his eyes and groans. He let Bass fuck him, not because Miles wanted him, but because he thought it would let Rachel know that she could not touch them. They were one – against her. Did Miles enjoy it? Yeah, it was a fuck. Rachel watching had been an immense pleasure. But Miles is worried Bass might think it means something else.

Once he’s done with this bath, he’ll have to go after Bass – see what he’s extracted from Rachel, or more probably, failed to extract. Miles, for his part, has done nothing but torture and kill one of Ben’s old friends – his college roommate, Tao. Last he’d seen this kid, he was still pimpled, home with Ben for Thanksgiving turkey. Yesterday, Miles stuck a knife under each one of Tao’s fingernails before slitting his throat, and for what? Miles learned nothing in return except how black his own soul has become.

“Miles? Can I come in?” Jeremy calls from the other side of the door.

“Yeah,” Miles calls back. Suddenly his friend – the least of the trinity of Republic founders (there mainly by chance at its inception) – is before him. “What’s up, Jeremy?”

Miles hasn’t felt embarrassment at displaying his naked body before another man since Marine boot camp until now. Suddenly, he is blushing. This must be residual shame from his threesome with Bass. He mustn't dwell on it anymore. It’s too fucked up even for someone as fucked up as Miles to handle.

“Just wanted to let you know where Bass is.”

“He’s not here?”

“No. He’s at the power plant.”

“The power plant! Fuck,” Miles swears and stands up from the bath, water dripping down his chest hairs and off his dick.

Jeremy’s eyes reflexively drift downward, which makes Miles oddly self-conscious again.

Miles reaches for his towel and begins drying off and dressing. “So is he using that shit on her?”

Jeremy nods, his bottom lip stuck out. “If you mean psychotropic drugs, then yes. I believe that was his intent.”

Miles impales his pants leg so furiously it almost rips.

“Um…you care Miles?”

“What?” Miles spits, putting on his swords and combing back his hair.

“I’m sorry, let me be more specific. _Why_ do you care how he tortures her? Isn’t it all the same?”

“It just isn’t. Altering someone’s consciousness – demolishing the essence of them. It’s not fair play.”

Jeremy puts up his hands in surrender, because Miles doesn't have to make sense. He's in charge. “Ok, boss. Want me to ride with you?” Jeremy half smirks.

“No. You stay here and practice wiping that stupid grin off your face before I peel it off with my sword.”

“Oh now, Miles. That’s not nice. And I was going to give you some good news.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, you don’t deserve it, but…”

“Jeremy!”

“Fine, fine. A spy sighted a man with dark brown hair – looked a decent bit like you – with two blonde children, right around the proper ages.”

“Where?” Miles practically interrupts.

“Wisconsin.”

Miles nods but his stomach drops. All of a sudden he’s not sure he wants to find Ben.


	6. It Exhausts Me to Watch You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I felt bad that last one lacked sex, so...a twofer. This one is just SO. WRONG. I probably need to be stopped.

* * *

Miles has entered the cavernous expanse of the power plant and askes around for Bass. He opens the door on what reminds him of a captain’s quarters in a ship – close, claustrophobic, sterile.

“Bass,” Miles greets.

Bass’s startling blue eyes drift up from something he is writing. Bass merely asks, “Did you find anything out about Ben?”

Miles pauses for a moment but tries to keep his face utterly still. “No.” He’s not sure why he’s lied to Bass. “Did you?”

“Not yet.”

_Is Bass also lying?_

“But you’ve resorted to this,” Miles expels with evident disgust.

Bass looks surprised and hurt. “You told me to do what it took to get her to talk.”

“But drugs?” Miles is pressing his hand down on the desk in quiet fury.

“I don’t get you, man. I really don’t. What’s eating you?” Bass asks, coming out from behind the desk with his arms folded.

“I don’t want you…changing her.”

“Changing her? Oh so, fucking her is ok – hell, us fucking all around her is ok, too – but somehow _this_ is changing her?”

When Bass says it, it does sound crazy. But nevertheless, Miles is enraged. He wants to clamp his fingers around Bass’s neck and squeeze. Maybe he wants to hurt Bass because of Rachel or maybe because Bass put his dick in Miles’s ass and enjoyed it. And Miles enjoyed it. Insanely, Miles is hardening right now, and this just makes him angrier. He’s lost all sense of identity in this mess.

Bass is suddenly so close to Miles that it makes him sweat.

“Miles,” Bass says too tenderly – too much like a lover. And then he confirms Miles’s worst fear (or greatest desire? Miles doesn’t even know anymore.)

Bass leans in and kisses Miles’s lips. In doing so, Bass angles his pelvis in so that their dicks brush against each other through the fabric of their uniforms, making Miles’s growing erection jerk into position. Miles is momentarily torn between rubbing his dick violently to completion against Bass or shoving Bass backward. He does the latter with unnecessary force. Bass falls all the way back onto his desk, and Miles can see Bass’s bulging erection to match his.

“Bass,” Miles rasps. “It’s her not us…” he can’t seem to communicate anymore, not even sure what he wants to say.

“Miles,” Bass almost whimpers, and it sounds so pathetic that Miles has to turn away, his hand blocking out the sound.

“Where is she?” Miles asks without looking.

Bass clears his throat. “Down the hall.”

“Don’t follow me.”

* * *

 

Miles is at sea in a way he hasn't felt since his mother died, but he forces himself to push down all doubts to face Rachel. Rachel is his prisoner – she has information he must extract (though hasn’t Jeremy already given him a lead on that)? Nevermind. It’s Rachel he needs to fuck to remind himself of who he is.

When he has the guard open the door to her cell, he sees that Rachel is lying in a dirty heap on the ground, moaning. She’s far gone in some drug-induced stupor.

“Rachel.”

No response.

Miles sits down on the floor, his legs splayed out like a child, and draws her head into his lap. He smoothes the hair out of her face and calls for a tub and hot water. Once it is set up, he gently undresses her (as she once did for him when he was broken) and then undresses himself. His second bath in one day, and still no chance in hell of getting clean. He slides her into the water in front of him and props her up with his big body, slowly washing her with a rag.

He knows it's wrong, but the slick warmth of her against his crotch makes him want her even like this. He drags the cloth up and down her sex, rubbing circles into her nub. Her moans increase, and he lets his head drop forward onto her shoulder, inhaling her neck. He inserts several fingers into her and fucks her with them impatiently, wanting more, wanting his dick in her.

He can’t go on like this. He pulls her out and lays her softly on the cold cement, spreading her legs.

Miles keeps thinking to himself: _rapist_. But he can’t stop…or doesn’t have the will to stop.

She whispers his name, and he completely buries his aching cock in her in one thrust. He pounds her, figuring her unconsciousness will protect her from how rough he’s being. It’s not fair. It’s not moral. But it’s already set in motion. Miles isn’t coming, and it frustrates him. After a moment, he knows what he’s missing. That feeling of prostate stimulation. It was so deep – so much richer than just this. Trying not to think of Bass, he licks his own finger and pushes it into his ass. It hurts, but he doesn’t care. He tries to fuck himself as he’s fucking Rachel, but it’s not working.

Miles stops in complete defeat, still inside her, but motionless; his head bobs onto his chest. He hears the door open, and without looking, he knows who it is.

“Need help?” the familiar voice asks – not weak anymore but complicit. Partners in crime.

Miles just nods. Why fight it? This is theirs together - their ride to hell. They might as well finish it. Everyone gets what they want...well, not everyone.

“Lie on your side,” Bass instructs Miles calmly, suddenly in control. Miles likes surrendering more than he cares to admit.

Miles moves accordingly and repositions Rachel so that he can enter her from this new angle.

“Now relax.”

It’s amazing how quickly Miles is able to will himself this time. He squeezes his eyes shut when he feels Bass’s tongue work him and then the bluntness of Bass’s cock. Bass eases in, and Miles embraces Rachel, again a unit.

Rachel whispers, “Fuck me,” which is more shocking to Miles than his new need to get off on Bass. Somehow, even barely cognizant, she’s not about to let him take her without permission.

Miles reaches back and grabs a hold of Bass’s ass cheek, forcing him forward until Bass is completely in him. Bass leans his chin on Miles’s shoulder and whispers, “Yeah.”

It’s hard to move like this, but they find a disjointed, sloppy rhythm. Miles grits his teeth and growls, “Close,” to anyone to cares, which sets Bass off in a furious romping that takes Miles’s breath away. The men come together – two bodies, flushed pink in desperation – the third limp against them.

Rachel manages a dry cackle. “Oh, you two have it bad for each other.” She rolls to the side and groans, shivering.


	7. You Flicker. I Cannot Touch You.

Just as Bass is giving into his feelings for Miles, Miles is giving out. Miles shook off both Bass and Rachel and stormed off like a toddler in a rage after their latest tryst. Seeing abandoned Rachel lying there in such a vulnerable, twisted little ball, actually makes Bass feel bad for her (or maybe just for himself), so he dresses her, lays her on a cot in her cell, and then slips out. He proceeds to stalk the halls of the power plant for a lonely hour or two…maybe four. Time has lost its authority, because Bass has no idea how to navigate the shifting of his realities. _It’s not Rachel but Miles he wants._ And just think - if he and Miles can get Rachel to give them Ben (or perhaps turn back on the power herself), they can rule the entire expanse of country from sea to sea, conquering by day and making love by night. It sounds so wrong but feels right in a deep and satisfying way.

Bass exits the plant (so dark inside it was like being underground), and the light of day explodes onto his sore corneas. He’s spent too much time indoors lately, fucking and drinking and thinking far, far too much. Suddenly, he catches sight of Miles, sitting on a log, his shoulders shaking. Bass’s stomach lurches – is Miles crying? He’s not sure it’s safe to approach, because Miles doesn’t like others to see him in pain. It causes Miles to lash out.

But Bass approaches timidly anyway. He doesn’t say anything, but Miles snarls:

“Get the fuck away from me.”

“You wanted me a few hours ago,” Bass answers matter-of-factly. He continues, “You can’t keep treating me like this.”

“Like what? My new fuck toy? Because that’s all you are to me Bass. A way to get off, since things with Rachel are so fucked up.”

Bass nods, trying not to let Miles see his agony.

“You can say that to yourself all you want, but I know you.”

“You don’t. We’ve diverged, Bass. I can’t do this anymore.”

“Do what?”

“Any of this! Torture my family – the woman I love.” His voice breaks on the last word, chilling Bass. “We’re going to let her go.”

Bass laughs to cover how queasy he feels. “Right. Like we can do that, Miles. After everything we’ve done to her. No, she stays with us, or she dies.”

Miles gets up and expands his body to its full height like a gorilla about to dominate. Bass tries not to shrink away from him. He can take Miles if he needs to. They’ve been in more than one fistfight together over the years. They’ve both won their share.

“You wouldn’t dare harm her,” Miles growls in such a low voice, it’s almost inaudible.

Bass scoffs. “And what have we been doing to her these past weeks if not harming her?”

Miles slams his body forward, propelling Bass to the ground. They roll over and over in the dirt and then Miles is swinging at Bass’s jaw, his cheeks, pounding him on the chest. Bass waits for a pause and gets one divine slug in, sending Miles sailing off him. He knees Miles brutally in the crotch and then sits on Miles’s stomach, pummeling him in the face just to show him he can. Then Bass gets up.

They’re both bleeding. Miles is dazed in the grass, wiping his dripping lips. Bass turns away, shaking with anger. He doesn’t want to fight – he wants…what does he want? For them to kiss and make up? For them to commence a committed relationship? To go to bed together, so that Bass can spend the rest of his life waking up next to Miles’s lean, warm body every morning?

Bass is fantasizing about his cheek on the soft curls of Miles’s chest, when he senses Miles behind him. He braces for another punch, but it doesn’t come.

“I’m taking Rachel away. Don’t try to stop me.”

Bass turns to observe Miles. “What do you mean, you’re taking her away?”

“We won’t be coming back.”

“Huh!” It’s a cross between an exclamation of disbelief and a laugh. “You wouldn’t leave. You can’t do that to the Republic, to your men. To me,” he adds almost hopefully.

“Goodbye, Bass.” Miles starts walking away, and Bass only has a split second to decide if this is really happening.

It is. Bass leaps onto Miles, extracting a syringe he had in his pocket for Rachel, and drives it into Miles’s neck. Miles is instantly unconscious. Bass flings Miles over a shoulder and fireman carries him back to the plant, at last placing Miles on the bed in his quarters. Bass then plops in a chair, thinking through his problem and can only come to one solution: Rachel must die. It’s the only way he can keep Miles here. And yet…two obstacles prevent him. First, what if Rachel is their only link to understanding the mystery of the power outage? Problem two: Bass doesn’t think he has it in her to kill her. He’s believed himself in love with that woman for so long, and hell, maybe he _is_ in love with her in a way. He doesn’t want to kill her.

The only thing to do, then, is to convince Miles that she’s dead for the time being – at least until he comes around. Bass will have to keep Miles unconscious for several days to pull this off.

And so Bass spends his days arranging Rachel’s fake death and his nights cuddling with Miles’s shivering, drug-addled body. After the second night, Bass can’t resist. He strips both of them to bare skin and climbs atop Miles, who moans in the midst of some nightmare. Bass begins rubbing his own hardening cock against Miles’s crotch – his dick flaccid and magnificently soft against Bass. It only drives Bass more crazy. He revels in the friction, before deciding it’s not enough. He wants to get Miles hard.

Bass traces his lips down Miles’s fur-lined chest and stomach and licks along Miles’s beautiful penis, gently taking it into his mouth. It feels so vulnerable and delicate. Bass is very careful, sliding it in and out. Heaven. Bass could get used to mouth-fucking Miles. Miles’s dick hardens slightly, but Bass can tell he won’t get very far this way; Miles is too deep in the drugs. It flits through Bass’s mind that he’s playing with fire, and he hopes he hasn’t given Miles enough to OD.

Bass pushes Miles over onto his stomach and spreads the long legs, licking his finger and pushing it against Miles’s hole. Miles cries out in a sad little whimper when Bass inserts the pad, and Bass tries to comfort Miles by stroking his bum. Miles shivers, and Bass adds another finger. The sphincter constricts violently, so Bass encourages, “Shh. Let go.” He has no idea if Miles can hear him.

Bass isn’t making much progress, so he removes his fingers and kisses Miles’s hole gently before pressing inward with his tongue. It’s a very peculiar taste, but he doesn’t mind it, he finds. Miles exhales, hopefully having moved on to a more pleasant dream. It encourages Bass, who fondles Miles with his tongue for a few more minutes, rubbing across the pucker and then pushing in, rhythmically.

Finally, Bass pumps his own dick a few times and leans it heavily against the primed hole. At first, Bass doesn’t think he’ll be able to make it in, but after a few moments, Miles’s body just gives for him, and he sinks. Bass settles down on top of Miles, Bass’s body melting into the man he loves, and fucks him rapturously, kissing his neck.

Bass is on the brink and bites Miles’s earlobe. Then Bass comes in an exquisite orgasm, filling Miles deeply, quivering, aching, moaning. Bass collapses and allows himself to slowly wither, still buried in the depths of his lover. He falls asleep content, warm.


	8. Your Liquors Seep to Me, in this Glass Capsule

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, with 8 chapters of smut like this, you’ve got to go out with a bang, right?

It is all arranged. Rachel’s ‘body’ is staged and prepared to convince Miles that Bass has followed through with his promise to kill her. Will Miles be angry? Of course. But Miles will get over it with time. Miles needs the Republic, needs Bass like he needs air (or at least like he needs whiskey).

Bass has allowed Miles to come down slowly from the drugs, visiting from time to time to administer smaller and smaller doses. He's has made the decision to leave Miles naked, vainly hoping Miles’ll come around when he wakes up…and what? Become Bass’s sex slave? Unlikely. So Bass keeps the door locked, too. Somehow, Miles has become the prisoner instead of Rachel. It’s a risky, unwise game, and Bass knows if he's going to keep Miles even as friend, he needs to allow Miles free will, some complicity. But the truth is Bass is having trouble trusting anything anymore let alone his instincts.

* * *

 

Miles opens his eyes and even the low light of a burning lamp is painful. A wave of chills starts at his chest and expands to his toes. His mouth is dry; his bladder is full. That, at least, must mean someone has been giving him water. He can’t remember what happened last or how he came to be here, completely exposed in this bed. His asshole stings painfully, and he reaches down to press against it. It feels scabbed like it’s been bleeding.

Miles realizes then that he’s been Bass’s plaything for God knows how many days. And it’s really no one’s fault but his own. He started this. Rachel upped the ante, and Miles let her. And now it’s come to this.

_Rachel._ Bass’s terrible threat comes back to Miles, and he tries to get to his feet. His legs wobble and shake. He goes to relieve himself in Bass’s chamber pot. After he’s done, he tries the door, but it’s locked. He turns his back to it and bangs his head against the metal, feeling helpless. After remaining there an eternity, he gives up and lies down upon the bed once more.

He runs his hand against his raw dick, thinking of Rachel and one glorious night of love making so many years ago. He longs for that (relative) innocence (after all, they were having an affair). He strokes himself a little harder and closes his eyes.

_Rachel is laying on her side, completely nude, her body angled so that Miles can see the tiniest hint of pussy peeking out from between her legs, just before the cups of her buttocks. He positions himself in a question mark around her and whispers in her ear, “Love you.” She laughs softly and pulls in his chin for an ever-so-light kiss._

_Miles then slides down her back until his lips ghost above that part of her sex he can just see beneath her perfect ass. He leans in and runs his lips up and down the folds there, allowing his tongue to slip in. Rachel throws her head back and sighs – he doesn’t look up, but he can feel the motion of her satisfaction. His tongue parts the folds ever so carefully, tasting her._

_“Miles.”_

_He loves when she says his name. It makes their forbidden act of sex real. He licks his finger and runs it down between her ass cheeks, stopping over her delicate pucker. She flinches. She’s never done that with Ben before._

_“Miles.” This time a warning._

_“I won’t if you don’t want me to.”_

_She hesitates, and Miles decides on a compromise. He glides his finger back and forth across the hole as he continues to lick her folds, and she is moaning with such abandon that he is quickly reassured. He reaches around with his free hand to push against her clit and in a moment she’s coming in shudder after shudder all around him – his tongue, his fingers – the finger against her pucker just enters her, and he delights in the squeeze of her orgasm._

_“God, you’re sexy. I could do this all day,” Miles says to Rachel._

_She is still coming down off her high and gazes at him panting. “Then don’t stop Miles. I could come a thousand times with your lips on me.” She closes her eyes briefly._

_“Happy to oblige." Miles is starting to covet some attention, too, as his dick and balls are swollen and throbbing. He repositions himself on his side, facing downward toward her dripping pussy, so that she can suck on him at the same time as he licks. Because he can’t see her face, when she hungrily takes him into her mouth, it robs him of his breath. He has to stop licking her for a moment to recenter himself. Her warm mouth slides up and down his shaft, and she encircles the base of his cock firmly, working it and every once in awhile cupping his heavy balls._

_“Uh,” he moans, and she seems to like that, because she redoubles her vigor._

_He returns to tonguing her folds, pushing a finger against her clit and occasionally plunging his fingers into her depths._

_“Miles, I want you to come in me.”_

_He silently agrees._

_With a parting kiss on her clit, Miles pushes Rachel onto her back and swiftly slides his wet dick into her. They should be using protection, but for some reason, neither of them care. They are too far gone. Rachel is loose from her earlier orgasms, so Miles plunges in deep, slamming against her cervix. He pushes up her legs on either side of him, feet to the bed, and pounds with abandon._

_“Uh, Rachel,” he gasps weakly, it's so magnificent. He feels lost in her, like his whole body is somehow cradled within hers. He even begs her “please,” but for what he doesn’t know. He just wants her so badly, feels like he can never have enough of her._

_“Come, Miles,” she says and the sound of her encouragement breaks him. He gasps and moans and spills into her. He allows himself to fall into her arms, shivering, and she wraps her legs around him. “You're beautiful when you come,” she informs him, smoothing his hair from his face._

Miles’s extended memory ends with him on the verge, but he is interrupted. Bass enters his quarters.

Bass actually looks a little disappointed when he sees Miles lying there with his hand on his dick. Bass approaches and sits on the bed. Miles is too weary to move away. He releases himself, while Bass gazes almost greedily at the now fading erection. He reaches out to put his hand on it.

“Don’t touch me,” Miles barks coldly.

Bass swallows.

“Well, let’s get you dressed then. There’s something you need to see.”

Bass retrieves a clean uniform from another room.

“What: not going to fuck me again? I thought that’s why you have me locked up here,” Miles chides him.

“I thought you liked when I fucked you,” Bass says crossly. “Now get dressed.”

Miles steps into his underwear and pants while Bass watches, then begins buttoning his shirt. Bass can’t seem to resist. When Miles is nearly at the last button, he reaches around inside of Miles’s shirt and strokes Miles’s pec. Miles can feel Bass’s bulging hardness just below his ass. Miles tenses. He feels very week from the drugs and from days of food deprivation and is not sure he has the strength to stop this. Bass is strong.

Bass slips his hand down through Miles’s chest hair, undoing the buttons Miles has just fastened until he reaches the waistband of Miles’s pants. He flicks that button open too and runs his fingers inside the flap of Miles’s underwear just touching the baby soft skin beneath. Miles dick is over-sensitized from his earlier masturbating. He stands there rigidly, trying to decide what to do.

“Miles,” Bass whispers in his ear, coaxing him. “Just let me fuck you. I promise this is the last time.” Bass doesn’t wait for Miles to decide, but drops to his knees in front of Miles, pulling his pants and underwear down in a swift motion. Miles’s dick bounces, and Bass blows on it. “Come on, Miles.” He cups Miles’s balls and traces Miles’s pelvic bone with his lips.

Miles gives in. He’s horny from having been interrupted, and what does it matter anyway? They’ve apparently been doing this for days while Miles was unconscious. Miles juts his hips forward, and Bass takes the hint.

Bass gently sucks the head of Miles’s penis, simultaneously running his hand down its length and then taking hold of the base. Bass begins slowly working the cock, and Miles pretends it’s Rachel. Miles entangles his fingers in Bass’s curls and pulls them forecefully. Bass seems to like that. He takes more of Miles in, and Miles is amazed to find that Bass’s throat can accommodate him. Rachel couldn’t do that. This is a new sensation for Miles, and he gives into it, groaning.

Bass plunges Miles in and out of his throat, and finally, Miles falls forward and comes. Bass swallows some and spits out the rest, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, still on his knees, looking thoroughly debauched. Miles collapses onto the bed in a heap. He knows Bass is going to want something in return.

“I’m not doing that for you,” Miles informs grumpily. “And my ass hurts,” he adds.

“No need to be a prick about it,” Bass says, smiling warmly.

He pushes Miles flat on his back and mounts him. Miles closes his eyes and braces himself. Bass begins grinding his erection up and down Miles’s wilting dick. It’s too much friction, but Miles lets Bass have his way. Better this than something else.

Bass is getting more aggressive though, and Miles can tell he’s not off the hook. Bass spreads Miles's legs, and Miles finds he is definitely too weak to stop him.

“Unf,” Miles grunts when Bass maneuvers his cock slightly into the pucker. “Bass…please.” He didn’t mean for it to sound like he was begging, but it did.

Bass is pressing Miles into the bed with both hands now and slides his dick halfway in and back out. In and out. Miles bites his lip hard - his ass is incredibly raw - and suddenly he feels Bass stop.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Bass says simply. “Put your hands on me,” he suggests instead, but it sounds more like an order.

It’s a better idea than the pain, so Miles turns on his side, spits in his hands, and begins working Bass’s dick. He’s never done this to another man before, and the angle feels off at first, but eventually he gets a rhythm, grazing his thumbs over Bass’s dripping head. He can tell Bass is close and begins pumping him roughly, just how Miles would want it himself. Bass comes in spurts against Miles’s chest. Bass leans his head in so it just rests against Miles's shoulder.

“So. What did you want to show me?” Miles asks after ages of panting, sweaty silence.

Bass looks up at Miles ruefully and whispers, “Just remember: I did this for you.”

_Finis._


End file.
